


The universe where --

by quigonejinn



Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-19
Updated: 2013-07-19
Packaged: 2017-12-20 15:45:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,017
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/889025
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quigonejinn/pseuds/quigonejinn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Alternate endings for Pacific Rim.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The universe where --

**Author's Note:**

> This is not a fic about shiny happy things, and uh, it gets kinda weird. You should not read this unless you are OK with reading sad things. And weird things.

1\. 

The universe where the kaiju resurface five minutes later. There are no Jaegers left; there are only fighter jets overhead convoying a bomber with the thermonuclear device: Stacker Pentecost was overruled. 

2\. 

The universe where the kaiju resurface five minutes later. There are no Jaegers left; there are only fighter jets overhead convoying the bomber with a thermonuclear device: Stacker Pentecost was through. 

How much does it matter to you, the person reading this, whether Mako and Raleigh are vaporized in the burn zone of a thermonuclear device, or whether they die slow, either in the twenty-five mile radius fallout afterwards or fighting the kaiju when they come to Earth? Death by nuclear blast or sudden violence, including execution, or slow, agonizing starvation? 

The atmosphere doesn’t need much change; the industrial age did that work, but there is terraforming to be done. 

3.

It matters to you, I guess, that they don’t both die. Fine. You can have one. Choose one. Does one of the escape pods malfunction? Does the one who takes the Gipsy Rose into the throat of the rift not come back? Ask yourself how much Mako and Raleigh, respectively, have to live for. On the one hand, Stacker adopted Mako after her parents died, and she was too focused on revenge to care to make another friend. On the other hand, too, do you think Raleigh was calling anyone the morning before they went for the Rift?

Think of Raleigh with Mako whizzing to safety surfacewards. In this universe, he touches her hand once before initiating the eject sequence, and he can still feel the touch buzzing up and down his nervous system: it’s what happens when you touch someone that you’re Drifting with. You feel it from both ends of the transaction. Your hands on skin, hands on your skin, your heart thumping wildly, your Drift partner’s own reaction. 

When the automatic trigger fails, Raleigh climbs down into base and triggers the manual override. 

He intends to make it back to his own escape pod, but he knows the only things he leaves behind are the photos in his bunk. Maybe the old Oakland A’s ticket stub he was using as a placeholder in the operations manual for the rebuilt Gipsy Danger. Maybe some dirty laundry. Mako knows that she is welcome to them if he didn’t come back: he told her, mind to mind, through the Drift, before letting go of her hand and hitting the eject sequence. 

4.

Is there a universe where they both pop up to the surface, where Mako leans her forehead against Raleigh’s and he leans back? In that universe, if it exists, they know they are tied together for life even if they never Drift again. There will always be this moment for them, on the water, together, perfect and happy with salt water on their cheeks and smiles on their mouths. They are in love on so many levels. 

So you have that. 

Consider, alternatively, the universe where Raleigh sends Mako back, but even the manual override is broken. He crash-lands on the planet of master bioengineers that use kaiju as shock troops. Does he survive? If they do, what do they do with him? 

Don’t imagine it in too much detail. You want to keep the last meal you ate. 

5\. 

Have you considered that, in this universe, the rift isn’t only across space? It goes across time.

There is a universe where only Mako makes it back up to the surface. The top of her hatch pops, and she climbs out, shaking, waiting for Raleigh’s to come back to the surface: she knows Stacker isn’t coming back, and there is salt water on her cheeks and tears in the corners of her mouth. She waits. Jets pass overhead.

She waits some more.

6\. 

The universe where the kaiju resurface five minutes later. There are no Jaegers left; there are only fighter jets overhead convoying a bomber with the thermonuclear device, but what use are any of them? The lead kaiju is bigger than anything anyone has ever seen. A Category 1 is one tenth the size of a Category 2 is one tenth the size of a Category 3 and so on. There are multiple kaiju, but the one directly next to her is big enough to blot out sun on the water, and it reaches an appendage up and curls around the bomber bearing the megaton thermonuclear device. It doesn’t crush the bomber. Instead, it holds it gently, as if it knows very clearly how much destructive power is inside. Fighter jets circle and strafe and fire missiles without effect. 

For her part, Mako grips the edge of her floatation pod and thinks, desperately, if there is anything in the survival kit that she can use. The flare gun? The small two-and-a-half inch knife? Fishing line. She scrambles up, and the motion catches its eye. 

It turns. Mako thought she was too tired for adrenaline, but she feels the jolt when she sees the eyes as blue as her hair. It opens its mouth, and she sees the inside is bright red: the kaiju roars, and the sound is old and terrible and remote as dinosaurs. Jets fall out of the sky. Giant waves smash against Hong Kong. Later, the human resistance obtains samples of shed genetic material and determines that this is the original kaiju, the progenitor of the every kaiju that has come to Earth. All other kaiju are clones developed from sections of its genetic material. 

What good does that knowledge do them? 

In that moment, all Mako can see are the eyes as blue as her hair and the coat she wore a lifetime ago. The mouth is red for — why these colors? Because all she can hear through the Drift is an echo from a voice in another dimension, through millions of years and stripped of anything sane, but still recognizable as Raleigh’s voice, saying over and over to her and Yancy and everyone that he has ever loved that he is _so, so sorry_.


End file.
